Shakespeare’s sonnets
Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published as a collection in 1609 but were written some years earlier, the bulk of them probably between 1590 and 1600. Scholars disagree about the exact dating. J. B. Leishman places most of them in the second half of that decade, with one later than 1603. The Elizabethan scholar A. L. Rowse feels that the majority of them were probably written before 1595.
There are 154 sonnets in the collection, and they fall into two groups: 1–126, written to an unnamed friend, and 127–154, written to a ‘Dark Lady’. Much critical scholarship and energy has been expended over the years in an attempt to unmask the identities of both people addressed in the poems. Leishman feels that the ‘Mr W. H.’ to whom the sonnets are dedicated was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Rowse has made a convincing case that the Friend addressed is Henry Wriothesley (pronounced ‘Rithesley’), Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron. All we know from the evidence of the sonnets is that the Friend was far above Shakespeare in social position and that he was much younger, being described as ‘sweet boy’ and ‘lovely boy’. Rowse has named the Dark Lady as Emilia Lanier (née Bassano), an Italian courtesan and former mistress of Shakespeare’s other patron, Hunsden, the Lord Chamberlain. Whether these poems are faithful autobiography or a blend of experience and creativity is not really vital to a reading of them. Yet, taken together, they do tell a story of patronage, friendship, passion, guilt and disappointment, with all the fervour and uncertainty of a great love affair.
The sonnets begin as a conventional dutiful address to the patron, filled with flatteries to the young and potentially powerful man (Southampton, born in October 1573, would have been twenty at the time of the sonnets). Sonnets 1–17 urge him to marry and so perpetuate his beauty:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die.
[Sonnet 1]
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
(See also the couplet in Sonnet 12.) When this pleading has no effect, Shakespeare tries to immortalise him in verse:
And, all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.
[Sonnet 15]
The poet finds difficulty in expressing his regard and his love. In Sonnet 23, ‘As an Unperfect Actor’, he deals with the trials of communicating love.
Gradually the sonnets become more personal. Shakespeare finds the Friend as beautiful as a woman but without female guile!
A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion.
[Sonnet 20]
In this sonnet he also insists, in a witty way, that his love is not physical.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure
Mine by thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.
[Sonnet 20]
But this relationship is the light of his life, a source of comfort in time of despair:
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
[Sonnet 30]
See also the couplet in sonnet 29.
But there seems to have occurred some incident that caused great grief and unhappiness. Deep feelings of hurt and resentment are expressed in sonnets 33–35:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.
Another estrangement occurs in Sonnet 42, when the Friend and Shakespeare’s mistress betray him by having an affair:
That thou has her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly.
[Sonnet 42]
This ménage à trios is also referred to in the sequence addressed to the Dark Lady, notably Sonnets 144 and 152. But the friendship is obviously renewed, and a sequence of very fine poems follows – known as the Immortalisation Sequence – in which Shakespeare commits himself to preserving the Friend’s name and beauty in poetry. He is prepared to defy time and death for the Friend in Sonnets 60 and 65, among others. Some sonnets, such as 116, deal with the nature of ideal love, ‘the marriage of true minds’.
But there is a great deal of sadness too in the relationship. Shakespeare is conscious of the disparity in ages, and he begins to think on death and parting:
No longer mourn for me when I am dead.
[Sonnet 71]
That time of year thou mayst in me behold.
[Sonnet 73]
A rival poet appears to claim patronage. Rowse believes the rival was Christopher Marlowe; others argue that it may have been George Chapman. Whoever it was, Shakespeare acknowledges a loss of inspiration under this competition:
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse.
[Sonnet 86]
Towards the end of the sequence, Shakespeare seems less enamoured of his subject. Disappointed in the Friend’s character, he begins to point out flaws: deceitfulness, unkindness, fickleness, susceptibility to flattery, and even the possibility of serious degeneracy:
For the sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Shakespeare is forced to separate character from looks:
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
With this the relationship has turned through 180 degrees from those opening flattering poems.
The sequence to the Dark Lady tells a story of sensual fascination (‘My love is as a fever’ – Sonnet 147), erotic desire and frustration (‘till action, lust is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame…’ – Sonnet 129), and the flattering attentions of a younger woman (‘thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, although she knows my days are past the best’ – sonnet 138). This too is an uneasy relationship. The betrayal by the Friend is referred to, with the woman cast in the role of temptress:
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
[Sonnet 144]
Reference to her looks are sometimes unflattering, much being make of her dark hair, black eyes, and sallow skin. Shakespeare seems at pains to show her as the antithesis of the conventional beauty, such as might be the subject of the Petrarchan sonnet. He does this not to devalue her but to emphasise her individual and unique attraction, which owes nothing to the usual clichéd image of female beauty found in the Petrarchan sonnet, which he satirises:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
